Dr. Seuss and Philosophy
Page 28
[A]udiovisual commercial communications shall not cause physical or moral detriment to minors. Therefore they shall not directly exhort minors to buy or hire a product or service by exploiting their inexperience or credulity, directly encourage them to persuade their parents or others to purchase the goods or services being advertised, exploit the special trust minors place in parents, teachers or other persons, or unreasonably show minors in dangerous situations.13
Such strong legislation serves to restrain the unscrupulous activity of those few (one hopes) in the marketplace who would exploit children for profit. One could ask whether exploiting inexperienced or credulous adults is somehow morally acceptable. If we think not, then McBean might find himself in a European court.
The stakeholder view would conclude differently about McBean’s status as a moral agent. A good company provides a good or service that benefits its consumers. If a company undermines the value of its product in order to sell something else, or if it manipulates or produces desires to sell a product that would otherwise be less desirable, then we can see the company dealing in merely “apparent” goods. Just as one would despise an eye that creates illusions, we should reject companies offering services that exploit our needs and desires, rather than meeting them.
Whenever we consider the relationship between business and the consuming public, we should ask whether business activity is meant to serve the public good or whether individual consumers are merely the instruments for the higher business agenda of profit. McBean preyed upon the Sneetches, just as Bernie Madoff preyed upon his investors. The laws didn’t need to be in place to make Madoff’s activity immoral, and the apparent lack of Sneetch laws doesn’t make McBean’s activity less exploitative. But a company’s responsibilities don’t stop with its consumers. Companies are also capable of mistreating the employees that make it successful.
Take This Job and Love It
Another relationship to examine is between the company and its employees. There has always been tension between the owner’s desire to increase profits by fetching labor at lower costs and the laborers desire to earn good wages and benefits. Some recognize all the worker protections now enjoyed in countries like the United States are the result of organized labor’s historic struggles. Some view unions as protecting lazy and less competent workers and illegitimately demanding compensations that business simply can’t afford. However one feels about the balance of interests in mainstream cases, it’s difficult to maintain that human beings aren’t being exploited when the working conditions reach the extreme. In such cases, we use the word sweatshop to connote our moral condemnation.
A sweatshop has been defined by the U.S. General Accounting Office as a “business that regularly violates both safety or health and wage or child labor laws.”14 Typically, people debate about whether some workplace is a sweatshop when conditions of health, safety, employment, or compensation are far enough beneath some minimal standard that one side views the situation as severely exploitative. In the postindustrial United States, there exists now the stereotype that sweatshops are mainly located in China and Southern and Southeast Asia. But the United States has its own share, too. Just in July of 2008, a factory in Queens was found to have cheated workers of $5.3 million, while coercing employees to lie about their pay and working conditions to state officials.15 Wherever they occur, sweatshops serve as the extreme case of undervaluing the contribution of the worker.
Most students of philosophy will encounter Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism and his arguments why labor is exploited. Briefly, Karl Marx (1818–1883) saw capitalism as an economic form that emerged for various historical reasons and would pass for others. It would pass because it’s a system that sets one class against another. In this case, it allows capitalists, who own the means of production, to appropriate the surplus value that a laborer generates above the value needed for the worker to subsist. Workers, who cannot afford to hold out without work for long, find themselves competing for less meaningful jobs and for lower wages. And the better the workers become at their task, the less valuable that work becomes, since the employer will come to expect greater productivity while keeping wages low. Ultimately, workers find that both the nature and the product of their work are owned by another who profits from their exertion. So, even if the conditions are not sweatshop conditions, under a Marxist perspective workers are exploited because one class uses its property rights to profit from the labor of another class that has no real choice but to work for those who own the means of production. Capitalism is thus seen as inherently, morally problematic.
But the undervaluation of labor can also be explained and condemned as illegitimate within a capitalist framework.16 Largely, the internal moral legitimacy of capitalism rests on the absence of chronic monopolistic conditions. If one can point to structures of power within the political and economic system that serve as monopolistic or near-monopolistic forces over labor, one can make the charge that labor is undervalued from within capitalism itself. Given the influence wielded by multinational corporations and the various giants that dominate a given industry (e.g., Wal-Mart, among retailers), it is not difficult to make the claim that such forces are at play and skew the price of labor from the natural price Adam Smith would expect to emerge in a truly competitive market.
Avoiding the larger ideological pictures, however, one could opt to develop a Seussian theory of exploitation. The good Doctor provides some insight into how employees might be undervalued in his classic If I Ran the Circus. Morris McGurk is a young entrepreneur with big ideas for the lot behind Sneelock’s Store. McGurk imagines his friend, Sneelock, will help out with “doing little odd jobs” like selling balloons and lemonade. As McGurk imagines even grander and grander ideas to implement, he imagines poor old Sneelock doing harder and harder jobs. Sneelock must carry a big cauldron of hot pebbles, have arrows shot at apples on his head, roller skate down a shoot littered with cacti, tame a ferocious Spotted Atrocious and wrestle a Grizzly-Ghastly, lie under cars racing over ramps, get spouted back and forth between two whales, and dive 4,692 feet into a fishbowl. To be sure, if he pulls it off, McGurk would have quite an amazing circus. Who wouldn’t pay to see it?!
What is interesting is McGurk’s nonchalant attitude toward the overworking and endangering of poor Sneelock in light of his visionary quest to bring about a greatly improved service to his potential consumers. Over and over, McGurk assumes Sneelock’s willingness, because “he likes to help out,” and he’ll even be “delighted” and “love it.” Indeed, “He’ll be a Hero.” McGurk is under the impression that his workers share his vision and are willing to do all the work and run all the risks to make his vision a reality:
My workers love work. They say, “Work us! Please work us!
We’ll work and we’ll work up so many surprises
You’d never see half if you had forty eyses!” (Circus)
Of course McGurk depends on those workers, since he doesn’t know how to train deer to jump simultaneously through each other’s antlers. But he’s sure Sneelock can train them. And how will Sneelock safely dive into that fishbowl? McGurk says:
He’ll manage just fine.
Don’t ask how he’ll manage.
That’s his job. Not mine. (Circus)
McGurk rejects responsibility for the feasibility and reasonability of his expectations. It is precisely this kind of washing of one’s hands that allows a systematic “legitimation” of exploitation. And given the fact that most nonunion jobs in the United States are covered by the employment-at-will doctrine, an employer can simply cite the employee’s ability to quit if she’s dissatisfied as a justification for ridiculous demands and taxing conditions. The idea that workers are “free” to leave or stay is often used for a defense in the cases of sweatshops overseas.
In a well-anthologized 1997 article, Ian Maitland argues that humanitarian concerns over working conditions in sweatshops are misplaced and acting on them by interfering with the market might
do more harm than good.17 The basic point is that “sweated” workers in foreign countries often are paid far better than their home standards, so these factory jobs are very desirable. Further, attempts to improve the worker’s situation will likely have the opposite effect, since there will always be trade-offs between the number of jobs and the amount of compensation and between improving standards and encouraging foreign development.
Maitland argues that workers voluntarily accept these working conditions. But surely this is because they are desperate and don’t have better alternatives. Aristotle distinguishes between the purely voluntary action and the mixed action:
Something of the sort happens also with regard to the throwing of goods overboard in a storm; for in the abstract no one throws goods away voluntarily, but on condition of its securing the safety of himself and his crew any sensible man does so. Such actions, then, are mixed, but are more like voluntary actions; for they are worthy of choice at the time when they are done, and the end of an action is relative to the occasion. . . . Such actions, therefore, are voluntary, but in the abstract perhaps involuntary; for no one would choose any such act in itself.18
Aristotle makes clear that some actions are done voluntarily in the sense that one selects the course of action out of the available alternatives but that none of the alternatives are genuinely worthy of choice. Isn’t Maitland banking on confusing these two concepts? After all, if a tyrant threatened to kill my family if I did not perform some action, I would “voluntarily” opt to perform the action. But we would call this a situation of coercion (as would Aristotle), not freedom. In the present case, a company decides to outsource labor to a foreign factory, and the workers voluntarily choose to work there. But they’re not being given a better choice! True, this isn’t coercion in the sense we just saw, since the tyrant causes the limited alternatives to be such as they are. In the case of sweatshops, some given company is not usually responsible for the poverty and corruption in some other country (at least directly), but they are often seeking workers in a desperate climate. Taking advantage of this is not some moral act of social responsibility. Imagine if Poor Sneelock had no other choice but to work for McGurk or let his ailing family slowly starve to death. Could we honestly say he voluntarily wrestled that Grizzly-Ghastly?
Maitland’s caution about the unintended consequences of humanitarian intervention should give us pause. But using the difficulty of addressing a situation as a justification for the practice is morally suspect. If a company contracts work out to a foreign factory, that company takes on the responsibility to ensure a sustainable living wage and decent working conditions for those workers. Otherwise, the company has decided to become involved in such a way as to take advantage of the disadvantage of others. Outsourcing labor while maintaining a sustainable living wage will quite often still be cost cutting for the company, but it won’t place profit maximization above treating its employees abroad with respect and dignity.
While it would be a mistake to naïvely believe that pointing out moral responsibilities is sufficient to solve the situation, justifying inaction is a recipe for the sometimes detestable status quo. While the solutions are surely complex and less than ideal, the idea that it is justifiable to place workers under harsh conditions for the sake of profit and cheaper prices for the consumer should be scrutinized. We should ask ourselves if we are not being something like McGurk, letting our vision of a thriving business blind us to the condition of the laborers whose work realizes the vision and secures our standard of living.
So far we have briefly examined the ideas that a company ought to respect its consumers and employees. Both are important stakeholders in a company. While the list of potential stakeholders is quite long, we have time to extend our consideration out just a bit to include one more, the environment within which we all must work and live.
The Sustainable Balance between the
Green of a Dollar and the Green of a Tree
A final relationship we can explore is that between a company and the environment and the tension between profits and protection of resources. The Seussian parable of The Lorax is the obvious choice.19 The Once-ler, now hiding away in the desolate land of his creation, tells us of his entrepreneurial adventure producing Thneeds from Truffula Trees. Thneeds are multipurpose objects that symbolize all consumer desire in a single product, while Truffulas represent an essential link in the ecochain. As the Once-ler’s enterprise grew and environmental damage mounted, the various species went away, and the tree-hugging Lorax continuously failed to convince the Once-ler to alter his practice.
The story ends without much redemption for the Once-ler, the Once-ler defiantly carrying on business as the very last Truffula falls. The Once-ler’s business is gone because the material resources are depleted, and the environment lies polluted and barren. Now the Once-ler, a recluse in his dilapidated buildings, sells his story for fifteen cents, a nail, and a great-great-great-grandfather snail’s shell. The only glimmer of hope is the last Truffula Seed that the Once-ler passes on to the boy so that he can grow back the forest. The Once-ler warns, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not” (Lorax). Even here the Once-ler does not work to fix his own mess but passes on the responsibility to the young boy, presumably symbolic of the future generations who will bear the burden of our present environmental negligence.
So does a business have a special obligation toward the environment? Well, first, is the environment the kind of thing one can have an obligation toward? One might argue so, but it is perhaps easier to defend the claim that one has an obligation toward some beings that depend on the environment. If a tree doesn’t feel pain, chopping it down might not violate the tree in any morally interesting way. On the contrary, if the last Bar-ba-loot family needed its shade and fruits, then perhaps I owe it to them not to chop the tree down. Of course, those most reluctant to admit that there is intrinsic value in nature will include animals as lacking intrinsic value. Think of the view that pets are really just property. So, we might only owe it to human beings (or at least similar kinds of beings) not to chop down the tree, since some human beings may derive some good from the existence of Bar-ba-loots. In fact, we find a spectrum of views regarding moral obligations to nonhuman nature. On the one side, some will see an inherent worth in living things, and perhaps even in special nonliving features of nature.20 In the middle, we see varying degrees of inclusion based on morally relevant properties, like being able to feel pain or being rational. On the other end, we find those who see only instrumental value in things and beings other than moral persons like humans.
While these differences are important in determining how one will act with regard to environmental dilemmas, we can simply allow that having an obligation toward the environment might be shorthand for at least having obligations to respect the environment for the sake of other persons. This allows us to postpone that larger philosophical debate for the moment. Now we can easily say that humans do have some obligation toward the environment and can ask whether businesses are like us in this respect.
One scholar, Norman Bowie, argues that businesses don’t have any special responsibility to the environment, only to uphold the law. Businesses are meeting consumer preferences, so environmentalists should only expect businesses to become greener if consumers desire greener products. Bowie informs us that “[b]usiness will respond to the market. It is the consuming public that has the obligation to make the trade-off between cost and environmental integrity.”21 This echoes the Once-ler’s declaration that it’s only someone else (besides those in business) caring an awful lot that can save the environment. While we are seeing shifts in the direction of proactive consumer choice nowadays, it’s hard to distinguish genuinely “ecofriendly” businesses from mere “greenwashed” ones. A “greenwashed” business or product is simply one that has been marketed to seem “ecofriendly,” when in fact it has little to no environmental advantages. Think of BP’s marketin
g campaign to establish itself as an environmental leader, when its core business is fundamentally at odds with environmental concerns. Nonetheless, from Bowie’s perspective, it is really up to consumers to keep making the difference.
One could object to Bowie by noting that the market may not be able to truly reflect consumer preferences about the environment. Like so many public goods, individuals may prefer to have others bear the cost of protecting the environment while they enjoy its benefits. Market failures of this type, Bowie points out, are supposed to be remediated by the government, which is why business does have the obligation to uphold the law. Consumers can voice within the political arena those preferences that the market doesn’t register. As a consequence, Bowie notes (as we noted in our discussion of the Sneetches) the inconsistency of businesses claiming this Friedmanite stance while simultaneously using corporate money and influence to interfere with politics. Likewise, the power of consumers is significantly limited when businesses monopolize various sectors of the economy, thus limiting consumer choice for necessary or highly valued goods, such as energy, food, and transportation.
Again, while certainly there are responsibilities across the board, the idea that a company can simply pass the buck to consumers and politicians compartmentalizes the human activity of commerce. Decision makers within a company are in the best position to determine how to minimize environmental impact of their specific commercial activity and coordinate with peers to remove pressures to ignore environmental concerns. On a shareholder model, however, a company should only bother with environmental concerns to the extent that such energies would increase profits, for example, for public relations purposes or for marketing. Providing merely the appearance of being an environmentally conscious company (or greenwashing one’s not-so-ecofriendly products) can be just as effective as actually attending to issues of pollution, habitat protection, or sustainability. The idea that the goal of business is profit maximization at the expense of any value unprotected by law not only condones but also encourages businesses to externalize the costs of environmental impact. Externalizing costs occurs when the cost of some business activity is not carried by the business or its customers, but by some external party. Imagine a factory upstream from a town that pollutes the town’s water supply to make its products. If the town taxes residents to run a water treatment plant instead of requiring the factory to clean the water at a cut into profit, a decrease in employee wages, or an increase in prices for its customers, then one component of the cost to produce the factory’s product (namely, the cleanup of polluting by-products) has been externalized. The Friedmanite view encourages businesses to comply with legal standards as minimally as possible and externalize environmental costs to distant stakeholders in both present and future generations. If we don’t embrace the activities of the Once-ler, then we can’t embrace the shareholder model.